Italian Biotech Industry 2017
It should be stressed that measuring the biotech industry requires periodic reviews of the obtained estimates, result of a gradual process of approximation, since biotechnologies are cross-cutting technologies and therefore cannot be identified by the existing industrial classifications.
The figure that emerges is that after a continued increase over the last decade, in 2016 for the first time there was a slight reduction in the number of the Italian biotech active firms. However, such an evidence has to be regarded as provisional, since the survey has been closed at the beginning of 2017 and some newly founded companies might not have been detected.
Relating to the other main data, it has been recorded an increase of the biotech turnover compared with the previous period, while a slight downturn has been observed with regard to the biotech dedicated intra-muros R&D investment. This result has been largely affected by the investment decisions of a few big companies active in the area of health (red biotech), although negative signals have not been missing also for small and micro red biotech firms. The red biotech medium-sized enterprises have been, instead, bucking the trend.
Concerning the biotech dedicated R&D firms, it has been recorded an increase in the number of firms in the agro-food (green biotech) and industrial (white biotech) fields, as well as in their turnover and R&D investment, in line with the growing role of such fields. The biotech R&D investment of the micro-enterprises active in the green biotech field, in particular, have been almost doubled since the previous period.
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